Winter Bliss

It's the last day of January and we are outside at 10:00 in the morning with only a jacket to keep us warm.  Best. Winter. Ever!

Theme Night: Camping

Richard doesn't often try to come up with new things to do (not enough brain cells left after he's finally done with all that homework!) but when he does, they are GOOD ideas. His latest idea? Theme nights. Since he needs something to look forward to at the end of a busy week, he suggested theme night for Fridays. We choose a theme and have a dinner that goes with it as well as a movie or activity that we can do with the girls. This week was a camping theme. We were going to make tinfoil dinners but ran out of time so we had those the next night and we tried to set up the tent in our living room and it was too big to fit...but we still had a lot of fun! We got out the sleeping bags, turned off all the lights, and played cards by the light of our flashlights.

 We also roasted marshmallows over the stove

and went "fishing" for goldfish crackers (sorry no pictures of that). Then we took turns telling stories and ended the night by singing fun songs we used to sing at girl's/scout camp. Kaylee is still too young to get the whole theme night thing, but it didn't stop her from having fun (and eating MOUNDS of marshmallows)!  I'm not naive enough to think we'll actually do it every week (after all, we don't want to run out of creative juices before the kids can really enjoy it!) but I'm hoping at least once a month we'll pull it off. Anybody have good ideas for some other fun nights we can do??

Squishy

 "I shall call her squishy and she shall be mine. She shall be my squishy"  That is what I think of when I see all of McKenna's cute little rolls and double chin. (and if you don't know that movie quote you obviously don't watch enough kid movies!!) I love this cute little chub-a-dub so much! We took her in for her two month appointment on Friday and found out that she is in the 96% for weight (13 lbs 6 oz) and the 78% for length (23 in)! Atta girl Kenna! She is so opposite of Kaylee in every way and her size is no exception. She's going to catch up to Kaylee pretty quickly I think. I love that she is so chubby but at the same time I'm pretty sick of people coming up to her and saying WOW she's chunky! I try not to be offended because I'm sure they don't mean it in a bad way but come on, at least tell me how cute she is first!! It's not as if I don't know she's a big baby, she's got rolls in places I didn't even know was possible,  but she is SUPER beautiful anyway!!  (sorry for the little rant) We love you Kenna and have been so happy the last two months with you in our family!

Negotiator

Kaylee is such a good negotiator- I have no idea where she got this skill from. She can talk her daddy into absolutely anything and she's pretty good at working me over too :) My two favorite ways she does it is:

#1 "Can I have some (gum, candy, lotion, etc)?" 

     "No Kaylee not right now"

     "Ok, just a little bit then"

And #2 happens when she wants to sit with us in the rocking chair instead of going to bed.

"Rock for minute?"

"Not tonight sweetie"

"Ok. Rock two minutes?"

Ha ha. It is so adorable!! And who knows? Maybe she'll be a great lawyer one day!

Tubby Time

I'm not going to lie, bathing newborns has always scared me. Those little slippery bodies are hard to keep under control sometimes! I still haven't perfected the "don't get water and shampoo in the eyes" technique for Kaylee. Maybe one day I'll figure it out! But I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've been able to bathe both girls at the same time. It doesn't always come out tear-free, but it's much easier than I thought it would be. And there is nothing Kaylee loves more than taking a bath with sister!

 

Family Pic

(sorry for all the posts- I don't get a chance to blog much lately and so I have to do them all in one shot when I can!)

I was looking back through some of our pictures the other day and realized we do not have ONE single picture of the four of us!  Not even at the hospital when McKenna was born.  That's kind of sad!  So I decided to fix it immediately and we sat down to take a quick family picture so that we have some proof that all four of us live under the same roof :)

Oh the Fun!

So much entertainment can come from a simple sheet of bubble wrap!  It kept us going for days :)

Snowfall

 We finally got our first "real" snowfall where the snow stayed for more than a day and was an inch or two.  However that snow is already gone so it didn't last too long!  Just long enough for Kaylee to have her first experience playing in the snow with daddy.  I am loving that we haven't had much snow, but I do wish for one enormous snowstorm, just so Kaylee can have a good experience building a snowman, making snow angels, and throwing snowballs at Richard

First Smiles

 McKenna started smiling a few weeks ago and I have been trying my best to capture it on camera but she is too good at avoiding a great picture of it! This was the best I got and although it is adorable, it definitely doesn't show her typical huge open-mouth grins that I love so much!

Sunday Scavenger Hunt

 Last Sunday all of us except Richard were finally feeling better after the yucky stomach flu, but we decided not to go to church just in case we were still contagious. After spending the whole week cooped up inside I was going pretty crazy. So to entertain Kaylee (AKA me) I decided on the spur of the moment to do a scavenger hunt. I dug through my craft box and came up with some string and wound it around the house a few times, leading Kaylee to different prizes at the end. 

 She wanted to skip over the string and go right to whatever was at the end, but I tried to keep her on the string, if nothing else to make my hard work worth something!  Ha ha. I'm not sure she really understood it, but it kept me entertained for the afternoon and she was always happy to find the prize at the end, especially her favorite Brutus doll :)

Initiation

I feel like Richard and I were officially initiated into the parent's club this week.  You'd think after almost two years of being parents we would already be there, but now there is no question. We've been SO lucky with Kaylee.  She's had a lot of colds and ear infections but has never really been super sick. She's never thrown up or had diarrhea before and this week we had both. So why do I say we were officially initiated?  Because of this:

Both Richard and I were thrown up on, although I only got some on my pants while Richard took the full brunt of it all down his shirt... It was a "fun" couple of days, especially when I caught this stomach bug as well and poor Richard had to take care of the whole household. 

On the other hand, we had Richard's mom come and visit us this past week and it was really fun to have her here. Unfortunately for her, we didn't go do anything fun because Kaylee got sick but I definitely wouldn't have survived without her here to be with McKenna while I took care of Kaylee.  And of course Kaylee and McKenna couldn't get enough Grandma time. We miss her already!

All Dressed Up...

And ready for church!  Doesn't she look so grown up???

These six weeks have gone by SO fast and we've been loving every minute of it!

Sprinkles Anyone?

Have you ever spilled hundreds of teeny tiny sprinkles all over your kitchen table and floor?  No? Well, there's no need to experience it for yourself because I have now done it and I can just tell you what it's like. First, you give a startled scream when the lid pops off because it caught you off guard. Then you see the terrified look on your daughter's face and laugh hysterically for about 5 minutes while the situation sinks in. Then you take a few pictures to remember the moment. 

 

 (This is only what was on the table. About twice as much was actually on the floor!)

And finally you spend half the night wiping off the table and sweeping, sweeping and re-sweeping the area until you think you got them all.  Oh ya, and then you sweep again a few days later and find even more sprinkles that have managed to sneak into all the tiny scratches and crevices in your wood floor. Overall impression?  Funny at first, but I would not recommend trying this for yourself. Just the fact that I did it should be enough for your amusement :)

Tales of a Meltdown

As told by Kaylee Henricksen:

 "First you say something that really makes me sad. You know, something like "No you can't have ANOTHER cookie" or even "Yes I will hold you, in just a minute".  That really ticks me off.

 

 Then I run into some obscure corner of the house, put my hands over my eyes, and shove my face into the floor.

Then I pretend to cry for a few minutes until you notice me being sad.

Then I peek up at you to make sure I have your undivided attention (while still keeping my sad face on just in case you don't know how serious I am.)

And finally I get over it and give you the biggest cheeser ever to put a smile on both of our faces."

It's a good thing that last smile comes up afterwards or these would be a lot more annoying. Oh the things kids do!!

Richard's Thesis

FINALLY after months and months and months of super intense research, a lot of super hard work, and a super frustrating advisor, Richard's thesis is completely done! We received the final product in the mail this week and Richard couldn't be more proud. The crappy thing about all this work is no one else will probably ever read it...but at least he gets his own book to show that all that hard work did produce something!!

Rub a Dub Dub

 Kaylee had her first bubble bath this week.  Kaylee's way of "playing" with things is so funny.  The whole time she was just trying to get the bubbles off of her, Elmo, and the cups she was playing with.  She's not mad that they're on her, that's just how she plays with them.  She cleans them off of her.  Richard did teach her how to make a bubble beard and so she kept doing that and asked me to take a picture every single time. (this isn't even all the beard pictures I took...)

 

 Such a cutie!  I'm sure there will be many more bubble baths to come.

Holiday Fun

This year since our Christmas wasn't full of family and parties, I think we replaced those things with FOOD.  It felt like just about every day this week we were making or eating food all the time!  Guess we'll have to go on a post-holiday diet along with 90% of the country... Kaylee was a big helper and always wanted to be involved in whatever we were doing.  It started with the pudding painting and then we moved on to rolls

a gingerbread house

    and finally sugar cookies! 

 

 We had a lot of fun making all these yummy goodies and it helped distract us from the lack of people around us. We were also SO spoiled on Christmas. 

And Kaylee was so adorable with all her presents. She was so excited with whatever she opened that she didn't even care about getting to the other presents. 

If only we all stayed that un-greedy!  Although we weren't party hopping or super busy this year, we had a nice quiet Christmas which was just fine with us. Happy Holidays!